Yesterday was M.’s 9th birthday, her first since her father died. I tried my best to make it a good day for her, and I think it was. We got through the whole day without her being sad at all, which is good. I, of course, kept thinking about what he was missing, and how […]

Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The Year of Magical Thinking has been on my reading list since it first came out at the end of 2005, and I just hadn’t gotten around to reading it. In looking for books […]

As with most of us, I love the idea of reusing and recycling things that could otherwise just be useless. Pallets have been hugely popular over the years for the sheer variety of things you can do with them, either as a whole or by taking them apart. Reclaimed wood, especially barn wood, is just […]

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Writing–it’s a family trait

Thursday was the Young Author’s Tea at M.’s school. Parents were invited to come hear their children read some of the stories and other writing their kids have created over the past few months. The children each got to pick two pieces, and we divided up into small groups of about five or six children and their visitors. M. read a “How to” piece on how to convince your parents to get you a dog. As I was listening to it the style sounded familiar somehow, and it later struck me that it was a similar style to the Mo Willems books about the Pigeon. She really loves those books, as well as the Elephant and Piggie books, and I think she adopted some of his writing style unintentionally.

Her second selection was a book about pottery, describing the different shapes and colors of pots you can make, what to do when you run out of clay, and how long it takes to dry. Her experience is limited to air-dry pottery and her battery-powered pottery wheel, but she fully described what she knows.

I was, as always, very proud of her. Her writing was fun, and she is always a great performer. While some of the other kids were there to read their stories, she was definitely there to perform for her audience.

As someone who enjoys writing so much, I have to admit that it makes me happy that all three of my kids think of themselves as writers to some extent. Both of my older kids tend to have a story or book in mind or that they’re working on, and it doesn’t seem to occur to them that that is not necessarily something not everyone does. I write, their dad wanted to write, so they write. I hope M. feels the same way as she gets older.